CommunicationTransientString (0x02EB) required a trailing u32 chat type after
the message. The server does not send one. Because the string is padded to a
four-byte boundary, the remaining length after reading it was always zero, the
guard tripped, and the parser returned null for every transient string the
server has ever sent. Not most. Every one.
Three oracles agree there is no such field. ACE's
GameEventCommunicationTransientString writes exactly one WriteString16L and
stops. Retail's ClientCommunicationSystem::Handle_Communication__TransientString
at 0x0057d460 takes a single PStringBase<char> argument. holtburger carries no
type field for the event either.
ParseTransient now returns the string. The wiring supplies chat type 0, which
is ACE's ChatMessageType.Broadcast and which ACE's own LogTextTypeEnumMapper
comment names "Default" — the honest stand-in for a message the server sends
untyped. What retail's transient strings should actually look like is a
rendering question and belongs with the chat colour work, not here.
The existing round-trip test was itself appending the phantom trailing dword,
which is exactly why the wrong guard looked correct for as long as it did. It
is corrected to the real payload and joined by a case sweeping string lengths
zero through four, so no future padding-residue assumption can hide here again.
Core.Net tests go 654 to 655.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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